Finland Futures Research Centre (FFRC) at the Turku School of Economics is participating in four forthcoming international research projects funded by the European Union. FESTOS and PATS are going to strenghten further the FFRC's competence in study of the future of the security. PACT is focusing on sustainable post-carbon society issues. In iKnow project the issues of weak signals and new foresight technologies on second life applications are studied.
Foresight of Evolving Security Threats Posed by Emerging Technologies (FESTOS)
The foresight study FESTOS concentrates on a specific aspect/category of new and emerging threats: future security threats posed by emerging technologies and emerging areas of applied research, including threats from terrorism or organised crime (potential abuse of new technologies) and security/safety hazards through inadequate use. The main goal of the study is to identify and assess these potentially evolving threats and to propose policy guidelines to be undertaken in order to reduce as much as possible their likelihood of realisation.
The co-ordinator of the project is Interdisciplinary Center for Technology Analysis and Forecasting (Tel-Aviv University, ICTAF). Other partners: Foundation for European Scientific Cooperation, FEWN (Poland), EFP Consulting, EFPC (UK) and Technical University of Berlin, TUB (Germany).
Researchers at the FFRC are Senior Researcher Burkhard Auffermann, Senior Researcher Rauno Kuusisto and Research Director Jari Kaivo-oja.
Interconnecting Knowledge for the early identification of issues, events and developments shaping and shaking the future of STI in the ERA (iKnow)
The project is co-ordinated by the University of Manchester and Manchester Business School. The partners, including the FFRC, are Z-Punkt (Germany), RTC North (UK), Techonology Centre (Czech), University of Tel Aviv, ICTAF (Israel) and IT companies Mindcom Ltd. (Finland) and CyberFox (Czech).
The project is focused on the study of wild cards and weak signals, in other words the study of issues which are just emerging or not yet visible but with far-reaching implications. The project will also focus on IT applications on social media and second life technologies. Web-based tools established during the project are going to be used also in the EU's own foresight systems. iKnow is part of the EU's BlueSky programme. Researchers at the project are Research Director Jari Kaivo-oja and Researcher Tuomo Kuosa.
Privacy Awareness through Branding of Security Organisations (PATS)
The overall objective of PATS is to invent a concept of security branding to increase opportunities for voluntary adoption of privacy standards among security organisations. On the one hand, the project will study the degree of privacy awareness across various sectors, firms and across international government agencies that promote or use security technologies.
PATS is co-ordinated by the Technical University Berlin (Germany). Partners at the project are: the FFRC, University of Tel Aviv, Interdisciplinary Center for Technology Analysis and Forecasting, ICTAF (Israel), Oxford University, Said Business School, The James Martin Institute for Science and Civilication (UK), Foundation for European Scientific Cooperation (Poland) and Arizona State University, School of Justice & Social Inquiry (USA).
Researchers at this two-year project are Research Director Jari Kaivo-oja and Senior Researcher Rauno Kuusisto. Mr. Jari Koskinen from the CID research group is also involved in the project, providing the expertise on brand research.
Pathways for Carbon Transitions (PACT)
The PACT project aims at shaping what a sustainable post-carbon society would look like and how we could reach it within the next 50 years. It will focus first on what shape the energy demand, and how this should evolve towards post-carbon concept, from two viewpoints: that of the infrastructures, in relation to urbanisation and land-use schemes, and that of the life-styles and behaviours, in relation to the technologies that should be available. It will then deepen the question of urbanisation and land-use from the renewable energy perspective, including that of the systems (centralised/dependence versus decentralised/autonomous). Last, PACT will investigate the role of social forces, actors, stakeholders in the transition process toward this post-carbon concept. The ultimate objective of the project is to complement these analytical components with an attempt to quantify scenarios of post-carbon societies, at the world level.
Project co-ordinator is Enerdata (France) and partners, including the FFRC, are ArcelorMittal (ARSA, France), Institute for Systems and Innovation Research, Fraunhofer-ISI (Germany), Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysics, IPP (Germany), Institute of Studies for the Integration of Systems, ISIS (Italy), Université P. Mendes France, UPMF (France), Laboratorio di Scienze della Cittadinanza, LSC (Italy), Metallurgical Research Institute AB, Mefos (Sweden), University of Padua, UP (Italy), EAV (Czech) and Regional Centre for Energy Policy Research of the Corvinus University of Budapest, REKK, (Hungary).
Researchers at the FFRC during this three-year project are Project Manager Maurizio Sajeva and Researcher Suvisanna Mustonen.
Further information:
Researchers at the projects: firstname.surname(a)tse.fi